Short one. The big news this week is not a deal. It is a law firm that has watched this market from London for years finally getting on the plane.
Sullivan & Cromwell has opened in Abu Dhabi. Ahmed el-Gaili, who chaired Latham & Watkins' corporate practice for the Middle East out of Riyadh, has gone back to the firm where he spent six years in London earlier in his career, to open and run its first office in the region, in ADGM. He told Bloomberg he expects three or four partners and eight to ten lawyers around him.
Two things about that. First, S&C was one of the big Wall Street names still without a Gulf address, and several still are. It did not open a representative office or send a partner out on rotation. It hired the man who ran a rival's regional corporate practice. Firms do that when the deal flow is already there and they are tired of watching it from London.
Second, look at what he will need. Three or four partners at that level, in Abu Dhabi, in the next year. There are not many people in the Gulf who have done US-style public M&A and sovereign fund work at that standard, and most of them are already comfortable. Every one of those hires comes out of another firm. If you are a corporate partner in the UAE with a book, your phone is about to be busier.
Also this week: Hogan Lovells Cadwalader has appointed Barbara Schwartz as Head of UAE Tax in Dubai. Three years into corporate tax, and with e-invoicing mandatory for the big companies from January, every international firm here will want one.
The Gulf project finance lawyer who has been through a financial close as the sponsor's counsel, not the bank's. ACWA Power is hiring one in Riyadh right now for bid-stage and close work. Qatar is selecting contractors for a multi-billion offshore expansion. Saudi is running hospitals as concessions. Everybody wants the same few dozen people, and I could name most of them.
The UAE committed forty billion euros of investment in Germany during the state visit to Berlin, with data centres near the front of the queue. That is the whole package; the data centres are one part of it. Outbound sovereign money at that scale means German foreign-investment clearance, power and land contracts for every campus, and cross-border data rules.
Dubai Aerospace Enterprise launched a syndicated loan of two point one billion dollars, its first since it bought Macquarie AirFinance, with six Middle Eastern and Asian banks running it. Launched, not signed yet. A facility over a fleet spread across that many jurisdictions is a security package the size of a phone book.
The Aldar and Mubadala joint venture bought Masdar City Square, seven office buildings, for nine hundred and eighteen million dirhams. Ninety-nine per cent let. A clean income deal with a sovereign co-investor, and there is a lot of that in Abu Dhabi at the moment.
In Riyadh, SEH Healthcare won a fifteen-year contract to run the SABIC behavioural health hospital under the Ministry of Health's privatisation programme. Addleshaw Goddard advised. That is the model the Kingdom is now running for hospitals, and it needs lawyers who have actually done a PPP.
And Porsche's exit from Bugatti Rimac completed, to a consortium with Gulf private equity as its largest investor. Dentons advised one of the investors in the buying consortium, from Dubai and Edinburgh. A European industrial asset, bought with Gulf capital, with some of the legal work sitting in Dubai. Five years ago all of it would have been run from London.
THREE JOBS I WOULD ACTUALLY LOOK AT THIS WEEK
EFG Holding, Legal Director for the GCC and frontier markets, Dubai. Twelve years' post-qualification, reporting to the group's Chief Legal Officer across the investment banking lines. A proper regional seat.
flydubai, Assistant General Counsel for finance and commercial, Dubai. Aircraft financing and commercial contracts. The ad says four to six years, which is a modest ask for that title, so read it as a chance.
Bridge Capital, Senior Legal Manager for funds and transactions, Doha. Six to eight years in private equity, funds or leveraged finance. Senior private-capital legal seats in Qatar are rare enough that this one is worth a look even if Doha was not on your list.
One note on the market. None of the ten senior ads I checked this week had closed, but five of them were showing over two hundred applicants, two of those inside two days.
Since one of the three is in Qatar: from Legal Route's 2026 Gulf benchmark, monthly base for legal counsel in Doha runs roughly QAR 18,000 to 55,000 from early to mid-career, QAR 55,000 to 75,000 for senior counsel, and QAR 70,000 to 120,000 for a General Counsel, with Chief Legal Officer roles reaching around QAR 90,000 to 160,000. Base bands only, and it is a zero income tax market. The full grid, every city and level, is free at legal-route.com/answers. No PDF, no form.
A financial services regulatory partner search in Riyadh, five firms briefed last week and five more this week. A disputes partner in Dubai at offer stage with an international firm. A senior counsel search for an investment firm in Abu Dhabi, at the partner interview. And a general counsel search for a government-backed developer.
The firms are opening and the sovereigns are spending. What is short is people who have done the work at this level and will move.
If you are a lawyer weighing a move, or a GC with a seat you cannot fill, the Legal Route chat at legal-route.com is free and it answers straight.
- Legal Route